Vanishing spin stiffness in weakly disordered two-dimensional Heisenberg ferromagnets

Abstract

We show that a small fraction of antiferromagnetic bonds qualitatively alters the long-wavelength dynamics of two-dimensional Heisenberg ferromagnets. Although the classical ground state remains magnetized, weak bond frustration generates logarithmically correlated spatial fluctuations of the local spin stiffness, despite the microscopic disorder being short ranged. A replica field theory calculation shows that the effective disorder strength grows under coarse graining, while the spin stiffness decreases, yielding anomalously soft magnons with a scale-dependent dynamical exponent $z>2$. Numerical diagonalization of the semiclassical spin-wave Hamiltonian confirms the anomalous low-energy scaling. The flow is toward an infinite-disorder, zero stiffness regime.

9 pages, 5 figures